This invention was made with Government support under Grant No. CA50750, awarded by the National Cancer Institute. The Government has certain rights in this invention.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to pharmacologically active compounds which are isolated from marine life, such as sea whips, sea fans and soft corals. More particularly, the present invention relates to such naturally occurring marine products and analogs thereof which include a diterpene core of the eunicellan class.
2. Description of Related Art
There has been and continues to be a great deal of interest in isolating pharmacologically active compounds from marine sources. Numerous useful compounds have been isolated from marine organisms ranging from simple bacteria to complex plants and animals. The compounds themselves also range from relatively simple compounds to extremely complex compounds with the range of pharmacological utility also being quite large and varied. Sea fans, sea whips and soft corals have been an especially fertile source of compounds which are pharmacologically active.
Eunicellin is a naturally occurring marine compound which was first isolated from the gorgonian Eunicella stricta in 1968 (O. Kennard, D. G. Watson, L. Riva de Sanservierine, B. Tursch, R. Bosmans, C. Djerassi, Tetrahedron Lett. 1968, 2879-2883). Eunicellin is a diterpene compound which has the following chemical structure ##STR2## No bioactivity for eunicellin has been reported.
Another naturally occurring marine compound is Sarcodictyin A. Sarcodictyin A was first isolated in the late 1980's from the mediterranean stolonifer Sarcodictyon roseum (M. D'Ambrosio, A. Guerriero, F. Pietra, Helv. Chim. Acta 1987, 70,2019-2027; and M. D'Ambrosio, A. Guerriero, F. Pietra, ibid. 1988, 71, 964-976). The chemical structure of Sarcodictyin A is ##STR3## No bioactivity for Sarcodictyin A has been reported.
The valdivones are a group of marine compounds which were initially isolated from the South African soft coral Alcyonium valdivae in 1993 (Y. Lin, C. A. Bewley, D. J. Faulkner, Tetrahedron 1993, 49, 7977-7984). Valdivone A and Valdivone B are two examples of this type of compound. The chemical formulas for these two compounds are ##STR4## Both Valdivone A and Valdivone B have been shown to possess anti-inflammatory activity.
The above mentioned compounds are a few examples of the many different types of materials which have been isolated as a result of the many scientific efforts to recover useful chemicals from marine life. These efforts continue today and will continue into the future as new chemical compounds are isolated, identified and found to be pharmacologically useful.